Genius has been defined as the capacity to hold contradictory ideas together
for an extended period of time—without going mad. The late Fr. Georges
Florovsky, the greatest theologian of twentieth-century Orthodoxy, had more
than his share of this paradoxical capacity. The two major commitments of his
long and fruitful life—an unwavering belief in Orthodoxy as the true Church
of Christ and a deep devotion to the ecumenical movement—would seem to
be in utter contradiction to one another. It is a tribute to his success in
holding these antinomies together that he won the admiration of both the narrowest
of traditionalist true believers and the broadest of mainline ecumenists—groups
not otherwise noted for their capacity for making common cause with just anything
or anybody. Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual, Orthodox Churchman,
edited and co-authored by Andrew Blane, emeritus professor of Russian history
in the City University of New York, thoroughly explores the character and thought
of Florovsky and lays bare the unity beneath these apparent contradictions.

This third, long overdue volume of a 3-volume Florovsky Festschrift contains
three extended essays: a comprehensive biographical study by Blane; an essay
exploring Florovsky’s role as a Russian intellectual historian; and a
study of him as the leading advocate of the “neo-Patristic synthesis”
that sought to re-root modern Orthodoxy to the ancient tradition of “Christian
Hellenism.” The latter two articles are written by Russian expert Mark
Raeff and Harvard Professor George Huntston Williams. An extensive bibliography
of Florovsky’s works fills out the volume. Taken together, these three
articles help us understand how this staunchly Orthodox pillar of the ecumenical
movement could combine his traditional Orthodox convictions with an appreciation
for idiosyncratic and variant expressions of truth. Florovsky, indeed, could
attack modern speculative departures from the ancient patristic tradition of
the Church while maintaining close friendships with figures such as Berdayev
and Bulgakov, who seemed to be more infected with the speculative virus.

Blane’s biography indicates that both Florovsky’s confident, strictly
Orthodox faith and his capacity to engage non-Orthodox perspectives had their
roots in his childhood. The fifth child of an Orthodox priest and educator,
Florovsky’s early experience of the Church was “wholly positive.”
The intellectual content of the worship gripped the boy and turned him into
a budding “church” theologian as he learned early that “there
is no tension between worship and theology. Rather they belong together.”
His early grasp of the faith can be attributed both to his natural brilliance
and to a sickly childhood: lengthy periods of recuperation enabled him to read
serious books “much earlier than would be usual.” And in the erudite
Florovsky household, serious works covered areas much broader than parochial
Russian interests. He developed a passion early for English-speaking writers
such as Dickens, Scott, Cooper, and Bret Harte. He also developed a lifelong
love of the Greek language and Greek thought. In Florovsky’s case, clearly
“the child is father of the man,” and already in his youth the major
themes of his adulthood were present: confidence in the Orthodox Church, an
ecumenical spirit with an Anglophile twist, and an appreciation of the Greek
roots of Christianity.

From Odessa to Prague

Florovsky took his degree from Odessa University in 1916. The clarity of thought
and love of the empirical that characterizes his later work (as compared to
the incurable wooliness of many theologians) may be due to an appreciation of
science that he cultivated at the university. Unfortunately, his further education
was interrupted by the Bolshevik Revolution, which sent him and several members
of his family into exile in Sofia, Bulgaria. It made no sense to remain in Soviet
society where “the only acceptable teaching would be from the Marxist
point of view.”

He remained only two years in Sofia, but this was long enough for two encounters,
one intellectual and the other personal, which were to influence him the rest
of his life. The intellectual encounter was with “Eurasianism,”
a school of thought that saw in Western scientific rationalism the source of
such great evils as the Bolshevik Revolution. The mostly Russian adherents of
this philosophy aspired to replace corrupt Western thought with a Slavic “mystical”
perception of reality. Although he ultimately rejected “Eurasianism”
as extreme and unbalanced, Florovsky maintained a lifelong antagonism toward
Western scientific materialism, regarding it as the source of much evil afflicting
the modern world. For him, the only cure was the Christian tradition of Eastern
Orthodoxy. Florovsky’s personal encounter in Sofia occurred when he met
his future wife, Xenia Ivanova Simonova. Unlike his brief dalliance with “Eurasianism,”
this encounter led to a lifelong commitment and a marriage of 55 years.

In 1923 Florovsky moved to Prague, where he married Xenia Ivanova and pursued
his Doctorate in Philosophy. His dissertation was on the work of Russian philosopher
Alexander Herzen (1812–1870), a strong indivudualist whose moral relativism,
in some ways, anticipated Nietzsche. Florovsky’s unyielding commitment
to Orthodox Christianity as the true starting point of knowledge caused some
difficulties with his committee, but he mounted a defense with his usual brilliance
and successfully achieved the doctorate.

“Christian Hellenism”

In 1926 the Florovskys moved to Paris, where the intellectual ferment of the
Russian émigré community was producing so much brilliant work.
His training and abilities came to fruition as he found intellectual stimulation
and lifelong friendships with the likes of Nicholas Berdayev the philosopher
and Sergei Bulgakov the theologian. Bulgakov, a brilliant speaker with a large
following, had founded the St. Sergius Institute the year before and soon Florovsky
was serving on its faculty. A chance remark by Bulgakov proved momentous for
the young Florovsky’s career: “Why don’t you turn to patristics?
No one else is doing it.” Florovsky did, and by the time he finished “doing
it” he had begun what is now known as the “patristic revival,”
and had found what he passionately believed to be the key to authentic Christianity:
“Christian Hellenism.”

“Christian Hellenism” meant for Florovsky that the dogmatic decrees,
liturgical decisions, and general patterns of thought developed by the predominantly
Greek Fathers of the Church provided a permanent norm that could be used to
judge all subsequent developments in church life. It is important to emphasize
the phrase “patterns of thought.” For Florovsky, Christian Hellenism
meant far more than a mindless repetition of formulas from the Fathers. Rather
it meant acquiring a “patristic mind” that could apply the spirit
of the Fathers to the problems and issues of each new age. Perhaps influenced
by his earlier scientific studies, Florovsky disciplined his thought with a
strong empirical knowledge of the facts and movement of history. He never let
himself become involved in speculation that drifted too far from the experience
of the Church as it moved through time.

Florovsky’s Personalism

It is ironic that this Christian Hellenism, firmly rooted in historical experience,
led Florovsky into conflict with the very man who had recommended patristic
studies to him. The Romantic, Slavophilic speculative philosophy of Bulgakov,
especially his notorious “Sophiology” was the antithesis of everything
Florovsky believed. Florovsky tried to avoid open conflict with his beloved
mentor and friend, but in the 1930s his bishop ordered him to serve on a panel
to examine certain of Bulgakov’s ideas. Florovsky gave his assent to the
condemnation issued by the panel. Incredibly, however, his friendship with Bulgakov
survived the “heresy trial”—a tribute to the largeness of
heart that characterized both men.

How could Florovsky simultaneously embrace the thinker and the man Bulgakov,
and passionately reject his most fundamental ideas as wrong and harmful to the
Church? An understanding of this will help us grasp Florovsky’s later
career as an utterly Orthodox churchman who was nevertheless a devoted “ecumenist.”
The secret lies in Fr. Florovsky’s “personalism.” Truth for
him was far more than the objective norms of Church Tradition. It was the process
by which individual men, in a free and utterly personal way, encountered the
living God who calls each by his own name. The goal is for each person to embrace
God freely and personally in the full Tradition of the One True Church. The
process of reaching that goal, however, may well mean that some individuals
find themselves wandering down highways and byways that ultimately lead to dead
ends. But the process of exploration must go on. Florovsky realized that Bulgakov’s
speculations, though full of error, were held humbly as his theological opinions
and not as dogma. Furthermore they were held by one whose heart was on fire
with the living God.

It was this same sense of a free “stumbling” into relationship with
God that allowed Florovsky later to engage so passionately in the ecumenical
movement while retaining complete certainty of the truth of the life, liturgy,
and dogmas of the Orthodox Church. George Huntston Williams’s essay stresses
that Florovsky’s “serene confidence” in the truth of Orthodoxy,
far from contradicting his personalism, was the very basis of it. Williams writes
that it was “precisely because of his theology of the freedom and dignity
of the individual person” that he was driven to dialogue and solidarity
with others with whom he was in strong, and perhaps profound, disagreement.
All men (including those who “have the truth”) are stumbling, erring,
seeking creatures who may help one another in their struggles toward God, who
guides the paths of those who “fear Him and work righteousness.”

Debunking Utopianism & Historical Determinism

Florovsky’s personalism affected not only his interpersonal relationships,
but also his understanding of the nature of history. Mark Raeff, in his article,
explores Florovsky’s rejection of the notion, so fashionable since the
nineteenth century, that history unfolds according to necessary laws of development.
Raeff summarizes Florovsky’s perspective:

A crisis . . . has been brought about by the exclusive reliance on reason
and an excessive worship of the laws of development. The ‘cunning of
reason’ has led to the apocalyptic revolution which Russia . . . experienced.

This apocalyptic tragedy—the Bolshevik Revolution—resulted from
“a distorted sense of history based on a false analogy with the physical
universe” and shows the evil of all utopianisms. Florovsky, rejecting
the notion of historical progress as it was found in the rationalistic ideologies,
commended instead the Orthodox idea of ascetic spiritual struggle. History,
as the indeterminate creation of free human decision, may move forward or backward,
but there is neither inevitable progress nor inexorable decline. History, he
felt, moves discontinuously, by creative breaks. Because of the “surprise
factor” of divine and human freedom, therefore, we cannot know in advance
whether certain courses of action are “useful” or not. Logically
speaking, participation in an ecumenical movement with those whose views are
the opposite of one’s own may make no sense. But breakthroughs could occur
unexpectedly by the grace of God and by the actions of free and responsible
human beings. This personal, volitional understanding both of individuals and
of history itself balanced his equally passionate conviction of Christian Hellenism
as the perennial philosophy of Christianity, and helps to reconcile what might
otherwise seem to be a contradiction at the heart of Florovsky’s life
and thought.

It also explains Florovsky’s lifelong and passionate hatred of “utopianism”
in all forms. After the brutality and genocides produced by twentieth-century
utopianism—Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, and so forth—Florovsky’s
articulate defense of freedom is like a deep draught of cold water in an arid
desert. But Florovsky can give us more than “refreshment.” He clearly
grasps the essence of the utopianism that is so deadly to freedom and that makes
the ideologies and “isms” of our day so evil. They are evil because
they rigorously subordinate human freedom and spirit to deterministic “laws”
of development. Those who supposedly know what should happen are willing to
crush and destroy those who “get in the way” of the program. When,
on the other hand, in humility and in recognition of human freedom we refuse
to know in advance what will occur; when we recognize that history is continually
being “improvised” out of human freedom and divine grace; then we
will treat each other as persons instead of as mere cogs in a historical machine.
Florovsky’s love for English and American democracy apparently arose from
his belief that these cultures had the clearest understanding of the freedom
of the human spirit and of history, and had built their societies around this
idea.

To America

Although his friendship with Bulgakov survived the “heresy trial,”
his relationship with many of his colleagues at the St. Sergius Institute did
not. Partially to escape from the tensions between himself and others at the
seminary, he accepted a number of visiting lecturerships abroad—both in
the British Isles, where his work with the Fellowship of St. Albans and St.
Sergius had introduced him to a wider public, and in Greece, where his idea
of Christian Hellenism was welcomed. He spent the war years in Switzerland and
ended the European phase of his life by accepting an appointment as Dean of
St. Vladimir’s Seminary in New York.

At St. Vladimir’s Seminary, Florovsky was able to put his ideas of Christian
Hellenism to practical use. He was determined to turn St. Vladimir’s from
a “Russian Orthodox” seminary to one that had a single-minded devotion
to the patristic conception of universal Orthodoxy—and saw as its mission
the communication of that Orthodox treasure to America. Shortly before assuming
the post at St. Vladimir’s he gave an address in which he challenged his
Orthodox audience to make their faith both universal and American:

. . .when we call ourselves Orthodox, we are claiming that we belong to
the true Church, . . . that we alone have the true message of Christ. . .
. This means that we have a very heavy responsibility. . . . Now let us be
frank and outspoken. Have you really fulfilled your obligation? Have you brought
all your treasures . . . into the common treasury of American civilization?
Now, Christianity is a universal truth. . . . It is not a delicate thing which
must be protected. Christianity is a weapon which is given to men to be used
in a resolute fight with evil and for truth on earth. . . .

He was largely successful in his efforts to change St. Vladimir’s into
a more universally Orthodox seminary, though his firm convictions and the resistance
of many to his program led to his resignation as dean in 1954.

A man of Florovsky’s stature was not destined to remain long in the academic
unemployment lines. He went to Harvard in 1956 and, upon reaching mandatory
retirement age, served out the remainder of his life at Princeton. In both institutions
he worked hard to relate his understanding of Orthodoxy to the dominant Protestant
culture around him.

Ecumenical Engagement

The goal of relating Orthodoxy to the mainline Protestant culture during these
years also had a worldwide dimension to it. Beginning with his participation
in the original Faith and Order conferences in 1937, Florovsky had been an active
participant in the founding and the ongoing work of the World Council of Churches.
In those early meetings he struck the note that was to characterize his entire
career in the ecumenical movement: “ecumenical dialogue is enhanced by
a blunt and honest recognition of differences.” For Florovsky, ecumenical
dialogue meant an honest, even a painful clarification of fundamental and irreconcilable
differences, rather than an artificial search for unity by politely disregarding
substantive disagreements. To the end of his life, true ecumenism meant the
return of “separated brethren” to the “Orthodox Catholic Church,”
which alone possessed the fullness of truth. This conviction created difficulties
with the very name of the organization to which he devoted so much of his time
and energy. Properly speaking, there could be no plurality of “Churches,”
but only the one true Church of Christ. Once again, however, the “personalistic”
ethic saved him from a narrow and fundamentalistic rejection of the ecumenical
project and kept him charitably involved with Christians with whom he could
never come to a full agreement.

His dual and contradictory concerns—making the message of Orthodoxy accessible
to America, and participating in the ecumenical movement—continued with
Florovsky until the end of his life. After he retired from Harvard in 1964,
he and his wife settled in Princeton. The 1960s and 1970s were troubled years
for them. Difficulties with his health and a sense of the downward direction
of contemporary history combined to dim the luster of his final years. The utopian
fantasies entertained by the youth of the 1960s, the gathering strength of leftist
ideology in America, and the increasing breakdown of social stability cast the
same ominous shadow over the end of his life that the Russian Revolution had
cast over the earlier years of his life. Xenia Ivanova died in 1977, and Florovsky
passed away less than two years later in 1979.

A Prophet Unheeded

Florovsky was not a prophet without honor, as the outpouring of heartfelt eulogies
for him testified; yet he might justly be called a prophet without influence.
Some of his mainline Protestant colleagues who honored him have continued their
blind allegiance to the utopian fantasies against which he warned. The condition
of the National and World Councils of Churches, as well as of mainline Protestantism,
is far worse than at Florovsky’s death. The viruses of radical feminism
and Marxist fantasies that have infected those bodies is now beginning to affect
the American Orthodox Church itself. As an ancient Latin poet says, “The
truth is praised and starves.”

The excellent and thorough essays in Georges Florovsky: Russian Intellectual,
Orthodox Churchman give us a glimpse of the intense commitment to truth
expressed in the life of this magnificent Orthodox intellect. If he has so few
adherents today; and if some who praise his honesty are yet chasing after the
destructive fantasies he warned so fervently against, it is not the fault of
his life or his testimony. This should not surprise us. For the Master whom
Fr. Georges served so ably himself said, “The gate is wide which leads
to destruction, and many there are who find it; but the gate is narrow which
leads to life, and few there be that find it.” It is to the credit of
this great Orthodox churchman that he taught his church to open its arms wide
to the rest of the world, but never to stray from the “narrowness”
of its truth. May the Lord raise up more who know how to be “wide”
and “narrow” after the manner of Fr. Georges Florovsky, and may
his memory be eternal.

Brian McDonald teaches English in a private school
in Indianapolis, where he lives with his wife and five children. They are members
of Sts. Constantine and Helena Orthodox Church.

“A Churchman & A Prophet” first appeared in the Winter 1996 issue of Touchstone. If you enjoyed this article, you'll find more of the same in every issue.

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